A few weeks after first contact with the pirate fleet, Commander Gaunt found himself in charge of a 3rd II-class star destroyer, the Bludgeoner. The crew was as uncouth as their aptly named vessel, apparently upset with the idea of reporting to what they considered to be a lower-class Outer Rim squadron. Gaunt did not even have to properly requisition the ship; apparently the chain of command was already interested in Nym's activities.
Gaunt was commended on the fact that not only was he able to find Nym, but find an abnormally large concentration of pirate forces and eliminate them quite handily despite the heavier than average casualties. Nym had been aboard target Beta much to Gaunt's chagrin.
Nym had been a perpetual thorn in the side of the Trade Confederation during the era of the Galactic Republic and was considered one of the most dangerous pirates at the time. He originally led a singular pirate band, the Lok Revenants, and closely worked with the Jedi Master and prodigious pilot, Adi Gallia. He was able to maintain control of Lok with the Empire's blessing but after he was discovered to be a Rebel sympathizer, the Empire swiftly wiped out his presence on Lok.
The Imperial commander who had lead the attack erroneously believed that the pirates would not pose a significant threat in the future. As a result he destroyed all potentially useful information when he glassed Nym's infrastructure. Nym was able to avoid capture and summary execution. Leadership was interested in why Nym had finally shown himself and set Gaunt on the mission to determine Nym's whereabouts and eliminate him once and for all.
The information on Nym carelessly destroyed by his predecessor would have been incredibly useful; one of the hallmarks of Nym's band was the brilliant engineers that he was able to recruit. As a result, they had been able to produce some of the best starfighters in the galaxy. Now that they had consolidated more pirate groups, their capabilities were likely beyond what the Empire thought possible. It was more than apparent that the data they had on his capabilities were outdated.
Gaunt could not deny the great serendipity that an opportunity like this had fallen into his lap. He had grown weary of the culture of backstabbing that pervaded the rest of the Empire's leadership and took this assignment despite its lack of glamour to operate relatively autonomously and prove himself through his merit rather than his ability to navigate office politics.
This was not to say that he disagreed with the Empire's mission, however. The Empire's swift and brutal enforcement of order was required to govern its huge breadth due to the intimidation and demonstration of consistency of how the Empire dealt with its enemies. A similar view was also shared by his role model, Grand Moff Tarkin. Gaunt greatly respected Tarkin due to the fact that he had the ambition and shrewd finesse to rise up the ranks and make his dreams a reality despite the squabbling amongst senior Imperial officials.
He hadn't been able to find much in the way of leads for his primary mission, so apart from the odd skirmish with various dissident splinter groups and Rebel outliers that he had caught unawares, most of his effort was concentrated on getting the crew of the Bludgeoner to acclimate to his command. Progress was slow, but it still had a modicum of forward momentum. However, his luck was about to change.
"Sir, respectully request your presence at a pre-brief at the command center ASAP. The Intelligence Corps is on standby," a voice came in over the intercom in the holoprojector on his desk.
"Very well," he replied, motioning to head down to greet LT Pulastra at the same holoprojector he recieved his pre-brief for the first contact with the pirates.
"Sir, the drones have picked up a large pirate presence in the Vilgax system. Their forces consist of 3 Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers and 3 Lancer-class frigates. Their main complement consists of Freefall-class bombers and Sigil-class starfighters," LT Pulastra said, gesturing toward the projections.
We believe they are unaware that we have detected them, so we should be able to ambush them with the same efficacy. Nym is confirmed to be involved. While intelligence cannot fully confirm he is aboard one of those vessels, given the size of the fleet intelligence finds it highly likely that he is personally supervising the fleet. Any questions, sir?"
"No questions."
"If there are no further questions, this concludes my brief." Gaunt nodded and left the room while the entourage also present at the holoprojector filed out behind him.
The burn from Ada's evisceration of his confidence still stung, but Neel still was able to muster up the gumption to leave chocolate for her after a week or so. Surprisingly, he actually decided to handle his emotions on his own this time. She was just distracted; she didn't mean any harm, he tried to convince himself. He was more than acquainted with her fiery temper, so he simply needed to keep at it.
While it vexed him greatly, the endless taunting he got from his peers after he had blabbed about his first meeting with Commander Gaunt did help take his mind off of things. He had found another body pillow of frighteningly higher quality and a much more indecent framing of Commander Gaunt in his bed. He decided to keep both of them because being flanked by two large pillows helped him feel a bit more secure. It reminded him of the pillow forts he had made in his idyllic youth. Unbeknownst to him, his peers were sure he would only keep one of them because of the limited space of their beds. His reaction to being forced to get rid of one of them would almost certainly be hilarious, but they were dumbfounded when he didn't get rid of either. They lost their appetite for making more body pillows and thus Neel became two body pillows richer than the rest of the crew.
"All hands, report to battle stations. I repeat; all hands report to battlestations. T minus 5 minutes until contact with the enemy," a voice droned over the main announcement circuit. Ada snapped in the helmet of her pessure suit and mulled over the aggravating reality of her situation. The information that Rosh was forced to withhold from her never came out. Typical lmperial politics. She sighed as she quickly completed her pre-flight procedure and waited with nervous excitement to fly her baby again. She couldn't stay upset for more than 30 seconds in that hallowed cockpit.
She waited the 5 minutes, but the order to launch never came. It climbed past 6, 7, and 8 with a proportional increase to her impatience. Usually they jumped right on top of whatever they were attacking, so a minute's delay let alone 3 was highly abnormal. Something was going very wrong, but all she could do was stand idly by and wait.
Astar happened to be out of the power plant spaces to take care of some miscellaneous officerly duties that she needed to budget for so she could get to sleep on time. Her time in between shifts was allotted for both sleep and paperwork, so the more time she spent doing paperwork, the less sleep she got.
She had recieved word that they would be conducting a strike today, so she was on her way to the command center to finish her operations qualification as a more senior junior officer. It was essential that reactor plant personnel understand what was going on above so that they could properly maneuver power and understand the needs of operations so that reactors and the bridge didn't spend time arguing about what the plant was supposed to be doing. They left hyperspace as she walked by a window on the way to the command center. When she looked out the window, she noticed something extremely wrong. She was close to the bow of the ship and given the Commander's tendency to jump right on top of their adversaries, the lack of said adversaries was quite unsettling. She stopped for a bit to reorient herself before heading aft to the command center situated amidships. She walked for a few more minutes, glancing at the Bludgeoner through the window on her left before looking right to determine her location relative to the command center.
An impossibly bright flash erupted from behind her without warning. The hull groaned and a sound that presented as a low rumble reverberated through her head as if she were standing next to a large weapon as it fired. It sounded similar to an explosion, but it had an unnaturally discontinuous volume. A searing wave of heat enveloped her, bathing her in what felt like a sea of fire. She hit the bulkhead to her right as the ship listed violently, knocking the wind out of her as the loud report of an explosion hit her. The Violator's Attitude Control System immediately engaged, allowing her to right herself as the vessel corrected its list. The light blinded her temporarily. When she regained her vision, she saw the bones and blood vessels under the skin of the hand that she had reflexively placed in front of her face. She snapped her head toward the Bludgeoner. The sight was beyond unbelievable and shook her to her very core. The star destroyer had been broken in half as if someone had just slammed it over their knee. Below the ship she saw twin jets of iridescent light emerging from distorted space in the center. The abnormal phenomenon fizzled out, leaving the rest of the unfathomable scene to unfold. The wreckage tumbled violently as the superstructure sheared off from the intense centrifugal force before exploding, presumably after some high energy system overloaded.
"Prepare for hyperspace jump."
That was all she heard on the main announcing circuit before the stars streaked in front of her.
The crew fell into panic as the ship jumped to hyperspace. A cacophony of yelling, swearing, and screaming alarms suffused the Violator. People wanted answers, Commander Gaunt being chief among them. He directed his intelligence staff to collect all possible data and brief him in the next 10 minutes. Luckily the bottom of the Bludgeoner shielded him from the flash so he was able to look out from the bridge to see the devastation that Astar had seen but from above. He himself was enveloped by a sea of fire and the discontinuous pressure-sound as he was knocked off of his feet and hit the floor of the bridge. The heat dissipated after a few seconds but the morale damage had already been done.
He still kept his cool demeanor; if he did not, the crew could potentially become mutinous. Despite his misgivings with the crew of the Bludgeoner, it impacted him greatly to see their lives extinguished for nothing while he could have done just as much to prevent it.
"Sir, we believe that explosion was due to an unknown weapon system. How it was delivered is still unknown," LT Pulastra started. Gaunt merely nodded somberly.
Pulastra continued, "All starboard facing sensors have been rendered inoperable. We were able to pick up microseconds of data prior to failure, but we estimate proper analysis of that data will take weeks. Search for any starboard personnel that can provide useful input is still ongoing." Pulastra internally twinged at the deep furrow that almost became a scowl on Gaunt's face. Briefing in situations like this were an intelligence officer's worst nightmare. This level of detail was unacceptable. There had to be someone who knew something. Gaunt turned to the field grade intelligence officer that flanked Pulastra.
"Retrieve Wing Commander Rosh and continue your search for relevant personnel. Ensure that Rosh is in my office as soon as possible and send anyone you deem useful. Deliver all relevant information to squadron leadership so that we may form a plan and to upper leadership to keep them abreast of the situation."
"Copy, sir," the officer said while executing a sharp salute and hurrying out of the command center. Gaunt turned his head back to Pulastra.
"You, state your name."
"LT Pulastra, sir."
"LT Pulastra, you will follow me to my office posthaste."
"Yes, sir," Pulastra nodded.
Astar wandered around, looking to make sense of the uproar that had engulfed the ship. She knew she could offer some useful insight to leadership since she was both a direct witness and likely very qualified to explain what happened. She also happened to be one of the few who had seen it up close; the Bludgeoner was low relative to the Violator, so the angle was not conducive for a good view by most of the ship. However, she was still dazed from witnessing the unbelievable scene firsthand and thus struggled to find out how to report her account to the proper authorities. Her breath slowly returned after her sudden rendezvous with the wall, but her chest still hurt terribly; she would have to check for broken bones later. Her ears rang and her vision tunneled, but she was aware enough to notice two faceless enlisted approach her.
"…uniform… reactors… know…" she barely made out. The enlisted put their shoulders under hers until they stopped in front of a faceless officer. Her senses were returning, but she wasn't all there. They made brief conversation.
"…found… starboard… saw… reactors…"
"…Commander… office… immediately."
The enlisted helped her down some winding corridors, but they stopped when she signaled them. She shrugged off of their shoulders and leaned against the wall.
"Ma'am, are you doing alright? Can you stand?" one of them asked.
"I'll be fine," she said hoarsely. She pushed herself off of the wall and stood up straight with significant exertion. Both of them looked at each other and looked back at her.
"We'll still stick around to make sure you make it to the Commander's Office," the other said. She gave them a small nod. The walk to the office was long enough to allow her to regain her wits before she took her station alongside 2 officers she did not recognize.
Rosh found himself in front of Commander Gaunt's desk once again at a stiff position of attention flanked by two other officers. One he recognized as LT Pulastra. He had seen him at the operations brief to Gaunt to relay relevant information about the unidentified bomber. The other he had never seen before. Judging by the reactor insignia on her uniform, he understood why. They were rarely seen outside of the power plant.
"I will cut off my search for relevant personnel here as I believe I have most of what I need to understand the situation superficially. At ease," Gaunt said tersely. He turned toward Astar. "Please state your name."
"LT Astar, sir."
"Am I correct in my assumption that you witnessed the event firsthand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Then we will proceed."
"By your appraisal what is the likelihood that this was a trap set by our mark?" he addressed LT Pulastra.
"Highly likely, sir. The number and disposition of the force leads me to believe that they deliberately chose that composition to lure us in. The disposition matches closely with what could be reasonably dealt with by a force of our size. They must have tracked us to know that we had an extra capital ship," Pulastra responded gravely. Gaunt nodded and turned to Rosh.
"Do you think that this could have been caused by the unidentified starfighter?"
"Uncertain. No weapon system has been able to bypass a star destroyer's shields. That being said, it could have very easily been waiting for us, flew into the shield, and slipped out after the weapon was delivered using a delay-based fuze. Given the difficulty I had in detecting it, it almost certainly could have escaped unnoticed, sir."
Astar was taken aback by these revelations. This was news to her. Gaunt turned back toward Pulastra.
"Why would they not have ambushed us while we were in disarray to wipe out our entire squadron?"
"There have been no other reports of a weapon of this type, so they may have been testing it, sir."
"Sir, permission to interject," Rosh interjected.
Gaunt nodded. "Proceed."
"If the unidentified craft were the delivery method, I believe it is a reasonable assumption that they wanted to minimize the risk of it being defeated again. This can lead to the testing route as was alluded to, or wanting to minimize the potential risk to their forces."
"Very well. Please describe what you saw," he addressed Astar.
"After the weapon detonated it created what looked to be a small black hole below the star destroyer. I know because particle jets appeared on opposite sides of it, gravitational lensing was present, and there were violent tidal forces consistent with small black holes. It must be designed to exert sufficient force to destroy a star destroyer, but promptly fizzle out due to energy loss. How they do it is completely unknown to me. They would have to compress the mass of a large star on a deliverable weapon system. The physics would require them to keep the mass from collapsing as well as require matter that is denser than the laws of physics allow…"
"I appreciate the explanation, but I am not privy to the particulars of black hole physics. I will trust your interpretation," Gaunt said, swinging his arm wide in a dismissive backhand, likely to indicate he was at his limit for science lessons. She took the hint.
"Very well. Thank you for your detailed explanations, it was far beyond what most commanders could hope for in similar situations. I have matters to attend to now. You are dismissed," Gaunt said somberly. The 3 executed sharp salutes and filed out of his office.